LA Preps For 4th CicLAvia Sunday

LOS ANGELES (CBS) — Ten miles of street across Los Angeles will be closed to vehicles — and thronged with thousands of bicyclists and pedestrians — for five hours Sunday, as CicLAvia winds across the heart of the city.

The route will again close cross streets between the eastern edge of Hollywood and the Westlake and Pico-Union districts, primarily along New Hampshire Avenue and 7th Street. At Figueroa and 7th streets downtown, the closure forks north to Chinatown, east to Boyle Heights, and south to Central Avenue.

This CicLAvia event will be Los Angeles’ fourth. CicLAvia — pronounced see-klah-VEE-yah — is modeled on a popular street event in Bogota, Colombia.

Between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., vehicles will be banned from the CicLAvia route, and drivers will be able to cross the bicycle road only at major streets where crossover points will be staffed by traffic control officers.

Fans arriving for the 12:30 p.m. Sunday game between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Dallas Mavericks, at Staples Center, may be affected by closures on north-south streets. Those closures will go as far south as 7th Street west of the Harbor (110) Freeway, and 9th Street in downtown itself.

L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa promised to use the 9:30 a.m. kickoff ceremony, at Olvera Street, to “announce a new bike initiative that will significantly improve transit options in Los Angeles,” his office announced Saturday. The initiative will mark “a milestone in the administration’s `all-of- the-above’ strategy to build a more sustainable city,” his announcement stated.

Metro allows bicyclists to bring their wheels onto subway and light rail trains, and is touting public transit as a great way to get to CicLAvia. MTA buses can take limited numbers of bicyclists to the event.

More than a dozen major bus lines will have to be detoured Sunday as routes cross CicLAvia.

CicLAvia is now held twice a year due to overwhelming attendance. The event has become crowded with pedestrians enjoying stress-free walking and play on the streets, so much so that bicyclists are being asked to exercise caution and courtesy.